The Evolution of Age-Dependent Plasticity

Fischer, Barbara; Doorn, G. Sander van; Dieckmann, Ulf; Taborsky, Barbara

doi:10.1086/674008

Cited by 97 publications

(155 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Gabriel, 1999;Relyea, 2003;Hoverman and Relyea, 2007). Such phenomena may also be age-dependent (Fischer et al, 2014). The significant difference in relative symphyseal cross-sectional area between the early and control groups at week 48 supports the idea of a time lag in reversing dietinduced changes during the second half of the experimental period.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Although these studies have documented substantial variation in how plasticity varies with age, there appears to be a general tendency for plasticity to decrease as organisms mature. The reasons for this age-dependency are not clear, but it presumably results from several interacting factors, including, among others, the costs of plasticity, an organism's ability to detect and reliably interpret information about the environment (especially fluctuations) and lifehistory strategy (DeWitt et al, 1998;Hoverman and Relyea, 2007;Auld et al, 2010;Fischer et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Teaching an old jaw new tricks: Diet-induced plasticity in a model organism, from weaning to adulthood

Scott

McAbee

Eastman

et al. 2014

Journal of Experimental Biology

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Many organisms exhibit a decrease in the ability to modify their phenotypes in response to shifts in environmental conditions as they mature. Such age-dependent plasticity has important implications in a variety of evolutionary and ecological contexts, particularly with respect to understanding adaptive responses to heterogeneous environments. In this study we used experimental diet manipulation to examine the life-history trajectory of plasticity in the feeding complex of a model organism, the white rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus). We demonstrate that, contrary to expectations derived from previous cross-sectional studies of skeletal plasticity, the jaws of weanlings and young adults exhibit similar increases in relative bone cross-sectional areas in response to the introduction of mechanically challenging foods into their diets. Furthermore, we present evidence that sensitivity to loading patterns persists well into adulthood in some regions of the masticatory apparatus in rabbits, indicating that there is an extended window of opportunity to respond to changes in dietary properties during an animal's life span. We conclude that certain aspects of the facial skeleton of rabbits, and perhaps mammals in general, are sensitive to environmental stimuli long after skeletal maturity is achieved, highlighting the importance of plasticity as a source of adaptive variation at later life-history stages.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching an old jaw new tricks: Diet-induced plasticity in a model organism, from weaning to adulthood

Scott

McAbee

Eastman

et al. 2014

Journal of Experimental Biology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Importantly, the posterior distribution after one experience becomes the prior distribution for the next experience. This is why Bayesian approaches are useful for modeling development, where it is typical for a given individual to have a series of experiences over ontogeny, each of which may provide additional information about the state of the world (Frankenhuis and Panchanathan, 2011a,b;Fischer et al, 2014).…”

Section: Model Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When combined, these two assumptions allow us to model personality traits, which may be expressed soon after birth or hatching, and which usually vary continuously across individuals within populations. These assumptions set our model apart from other recent Bayesian models of development, which assume that (1) all of the individuals in a population are born with the same prior distribution, (2) the variable in the external world that animals are attempting to estimate can take on one of only two different states, and (3) there are only two phenotypes, each of which is favored in one of the two states (e.g., Frankenhuis and Panchanathan, 2011a;Fischer et al, 2014). In addition, our assumption that prior and posterior distributions are continuously distributed allows the means and the variances of these distributions to vary independently of one another (see below, Appendix and Discussion); this is not an option in twostate models, since in binomial distributions, the variance is a fixed function of the mean.…”

Section: Model Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual differences in the potential and realized developmental plasticity of personality traits

Stamps

Krishnan

2014

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Changes in personality over ontogeny can occur even when every agent (individual or genotype) is exposed to the same set of cues, experiences or environmental conditions. A recent Bayesian model (Stamps and Krishnan, in press) shows how individual differences in the means and variances of prior distributions of estimates of variables such as danger can generate predictable individual differences in behavioral developmental trajectories, and predictable changes in the differential consistency (broad-sense repeatability) of behavior over ontogeny, even if every subject is reared and maintained under the same conditions. We use this model to highlight the distinction between potential plasticity (the ability of an agent to change its phenotype in response to different types of experience) and realized plasticity (the extent to which an agent's phenotype actually changes in response to a specific experience), and to demonstrate why the realized behavioral developmental plasticity of a given agent might vary as a function of the type of cues to which that agent was exposed over ontogeny. We describe two commonly used experimental protocols for studying individual differences in developmental plasticity (within-individual vs. replicate individual designs), discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each for investigating individual differences in the developmental plasticity of personality traits, and explain why replicate individual designs provide better estimates than within-individual designs of the potential developmental plasticity of behavioral traits. More generally, we suggest that a Bayesian approach to development, especially one which assumes that individuals differ with respect to the information provided by their immediate and distant ancestors, can provide valuable insights into how genes, epigenetic factors, maternal effects, and personal experiences might combine across the lifetime to affect the development of personality and other behavioral traits.

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“…Theoretical approaches may shed light on the complex evolutionary feedbacks that could result among these factors. Indeed, a recent model emphasizes the benefits to delaying trait development for a long enough period of time to obtain accurate information on the state of the environment (Fischer et al, 2014).…”

Section: The Complexities Of Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life history as a constraint on plasticity: developmental timing is correlated with phenotypic variation in birds

2015

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Understanding why organisms vary in developmental plasticity has implications for predicting population responses to changing environments and the maintenance of intraspecific variation. The epiphenotype hypothesis posits that the timing of development can constrain plasticity-the earlier alternate phenotypes begin to develop, the greater the difference that can result amongst the final traits. This research extends this idea by considering how life history timing shapes the opportunity for the environment to influence trait development. We test the prediction that the earlier an individual begins to actively interact with and explore their environment, the greater the opportunity for plasticity and thus variation in foraging traits. This research focuses on life history variation across four groups of birds using museum specimens and measurements from the literature. We reasoned that greater phenotypic plasticity, through either environmental effects or genotype-by-environment interactions in development, would be manifest in larger trait ranges (bills and tarsi) within species. Among shorebirds and ducks, we found that species with relatively shorter incubation times tended to show greater phenotypic variation. Across warblers and sparrows, we found little support linking timing of flight and trait variation. Overall, our results also suggest a pattern between body size and trait variation, consistent with constraints on egg size that might result in larger species having more environmental influences on development. Taken together, our results provide some support for the hypothesis that variation in life histories affects how the environment shapes development, through either the expression of plasticity or the release of cryptic genetic variation.

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The Evolution of Age-Dependent Plasticity

Cited by 97 publications

References 46 publications

Teaching an old jaw new tricks: Diet-induced plasticity in a model organism, from weaning to adulthood

Teaching an old jaw new tricks: Diet-induced plasticity in a model organism, from weaning to adulthood

Individual differences in the potential and realized developmental plasticity of personality traits

Life history as a constraint on plasticity: developmental timing is correlated with phenotypic variation in birds

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